The girl with the panda backpack.

Monster High doll hair and head removal help

I really hope this information/guide helps someone else, when I wanted to do my first Monster High doll repaint I did much scouring before feeling confident in getting started. These are some basics I think anyone interested can get use out of!

This Monster High doll is having her hair re-rooted. Tie off the hair, you’ll want to cut the hair to closest the scalp possible. The closer you cut and the more careful you are, the less time you spend on later steps .

1. The first pass get close as possible, but don’t take too long you’ll come back a couple passes. Refer to the right photo which is after three passes. I lacked a fine headed scissor so it was still too long for my liking but we can make do.

Wa-la! No more ick, during this process you’ll notice your fingers sticky and that’s the glue they’ve used to keep her hair in place.

2. Monster High dolls come with an interesting neck joint, one easily breakable. Some people remove the head using a hair dryer held towards the neck to soften the head’s plastic. This head must be wiggled off and you must be gentle with that neck joint. At the same time you must use a sturdy force. Run hot water (so hot you’d rather not touch it), plug the drain and submerge her head and neck about 8 seconds. Do a jiggling of the head and you’ll see the bottom plastic disc pop out easy. It’s the neck joint’s jutting nobs that can cause issue.

Submberge the head 5 seconds and give it a good tug to the one side at an angle away or towards you. Study the image of the neck joint I’ve included, squeeze her head and consider where those pieces just out the sides.

If you notice a whitening of the colored plastic near the base of her neck attached closest to her torso or the area under those two jutted pieces… try another submersion because you’re putting too much pressure and the head isn’t softened enough. There’s also glue securing the hair inside her head and this glue can be holding onto the tip of the neck joint.

3. The hair is kept secure with a glue bind inside, once you’ve loosened your plugs you’ll want to remove these bits of ick.

4. This technique is covered in many tutorials about removing hair for re-rooting. Using a pin or pin tool to push the plugs from the outside in then coming back with a long tweezers into the head removing plugs. I have another way I like to remove the original hair plugs combined with this technique, remember it’s always good to try out different techniques if you can afford it at the time!

5. The technique with the pin tool is great, but I wondered with how the glue was keeping the plugs together if I could remove it in strips. I eyed my scoop shaped metal tool normally I use it for sculpting miniatures. The tip of this tool is sharp and you must be confident in your ability to feel inside for the glue versus digging into the soft head. Hook into the glue and create a divot then dig a bit harder but keep a gentle force, hook and pull. I am able to remove approximately ten plugs in one tug, you do still have some bits you’ll have to fish out after though, you must have patience with this process.

That’s a lot of ick!

6. Before we wash and call it done, lets hold her up to the light and we’ll visually see where holes are still being plugged by glue or hair bits.

I spy with my eyes masses of hair bits and glue! Must tweezers those bits out.

7. Give her a good wash. Use warmed water and a mild soap with q-tips for the inside of her head. Allow her plenty of time to dry, now’s a good time to consider your mock-up sketches.

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Good luck to all other Monster High doll enthusiasts out there and I hope you don’t break a neck!